The challenge of making a low cost, reliable interconnection between electronic subassemblies such as printed circuit boards is not new. The literature is replete with novel and interesting solutions to the problem. Unfortunately, the perfect interconnect has not been invented, and the need remains for better interconnect solutions for a variety of applications.
The most common applications involve connectors for electrically bridging individual printed circuit boards (PCBs). Traditionally, the connection of closely-stacked parallel PCBs has been achieved with rigid connectors. These are typically made of two mating halves, a male and a female, each having leads to attach to the PCB and receptacles captured in a rigid housing. One advantage of rigid connectors is that the various halves of the connectors are easily surface mountable and some degree of automation can be employed when they are attached to the PCB. However, they often require manual processes to mate the two PCBs to each other, and they are susceptible to mechanical failure due to stress induced by tolerance stackup or by mechanical shock when dropped onto a surface. Some have sought to overcome these problems by creating a flexible interconnection between the two PCBs. This is typically achieved by plugging a flexible circuit into a connector which is mounted on the PCB. While this solves the stress problem in the assembly, a rigid connector still exists on each PCB and additional parts are required. In addition, flexible circuits do not lend themselves well to automated assembly. A novel solution, found in previously filed, commonly owned application number 08/801612 provides a flexible interconnect assembly for interconnection of adjacent PCBs on a common manufacturing line which overcomes the limitations of the prior art.
However, a need still exists for a surface mountable flexible interconnect which is not limited to PCB-to-PCB interconnection applications. Furthermore, the need exists for a flexible interconnect which is amenable to manufacturing environments in which two subassemblies requiring interconnection do not share a common manufacturing line (i.e., where the two subassemblies are never situated side-by-side during manufacturing operations).